“Why on earth should I say anything to you?” Jacob retorted.
“We had an option ourselves!” Littleham thundered, striking the desk with his clenched fist.
“I remember your telling me so,” Jacob observed. “I also remember your telling me that it had another two months to run, whereas it expires to-morrow. What I don’t seem to remember, though, is your asking me for my share of the contributing money.”
Jacob had never appeared more guileless. The two men became speechless in the face of his bland equanimity. Then Montague cleared his throat.
“Come, come,” he remonstrated, “no need for any of us to lose our tempers. Let us sit down and discuss this little matter like gentlemen. I am quite sure Mr. Pratt will do the square thing. I propose that we adjourn to the Milan. A bottle of the old sort, eh, Pratt?”
Jacob leaned back in his chair, his finger tips pressed together, and shook his head sorrowfully.
“I do not think,” he said, “that I shall ever drink with either of you again. You entered into a conspiracy behind my back to keep the Cropstone Wood, Water and Electric Light Company in your joint possession, your scheme being to make use of the old charter the company possessed and to charge outrageous prices for the water and lighting. With that in view, you relieved yourselves of your interest in the land at some sacrifice, expecting to land me with the whole estate, and leaving me to bear the whole brunt of the complaints and the failure of the depositors to carry out their purchases. That, I believe, is a fair outline of your scheme, Messrs. Montague and Littleham—elaborated, mark you, after you had mentioned the matter of the water and the lighting to me, on your first visit, and pointed out the additional source of profit. You relied, I presume, either on my blind confidence in you or my bad memory.”
“I can assure you, Pratt,” Mr. Montague began piteously,—
“Damn!” his confederate ejaculated with fervour.
“Fortunately,” Jacob continued, “I am not quite such a mug as I must have seemed to you. Before I parted with the money for the land, I paid a visit to the offices of the Cropstone Wood, Water and Electric Light Company, examined your option, and finding it illegal, as it was signed only by the Chairman of the company, without notice to the shareholders, I obtained one in my own name, which I exercised within a few hours. I am now the sole owner of the Cropstone Wood, Water and Electric Light Company and the Cropstone Wood Estates. Also of this office, gentlemen, from which I beg that you will depart as quickly as possible.”
“I’m damned if I stir a foot!” Littleham declared furiously. “We’ve been swindled!”
Jacob struck his bell, and Dauncey came in with a very grim look upon his face. Mr. Dane Montague caught up his hat and plucked at the sleeve of his companion.
“You shall hear from our solicitors,” he spluttered.
“Delighted!” Jacob replied. “I should keep the six-and-eightpence, though, if I were you.”
Two very angry men were escorted off the premises. Then Dauncey returned with a grin upon his face.
“I beg your pardon, Jacob,” he said humbly. “I never dreamed that you had them pickled. Tell me about it?”
“It was really very simple,” Jacob explained. “They came to me with two schemes, one legitimate, the other illegitimate. The legitimate one appealed to me. I found the money, bought the estate, and saw that they had a decent profit. As regards the illegitimate one, I met them on their own ground. I got that young fellow whom we came across down at Cropstone to look into the affairs of the Water and Lighting Company, found that they were an absolutely moribund concern, bought them out for cash, with the sole condition of secrecy, and sat tight. If Montague and Littleham had kept their bargain—that is to say if they had let me into their scheme for purchasing the Company—I should have told them the truth, a few plain words would have passed, and I should have compensated them for their disappointment. As it was, they tried to be too clever. They tried to land me with the remainder of the property, after they had made their profit, and with the money I paid them they were going to take over what they imagined to be the more profitable side of the deal, the Water and Lighting Company, and leave me out of it. That’s the long and short of it, Dick.”
A gleam of admiration shone in Dauncey’s eyes.
“My congratulations, Jacob,” he murmured. “I have underestimated your talents.”
Jacob smiled benevolently.
“Dick,” he rejoined, “we haven’t yet had time to gain much experience in the world of high finance, but here’s one little truism which you can take to heart. It’s easier to get the best of a rogue than of a jay. The jay as a rule knows he’s a jay, and is terrified all the time lest other people should find it out. The rogue believes that he’s cleverer than he is, and that other people are bigger fools than they are.... Shall we—”
“By all means,” Dauncey acquiesced, reaching promptly for his hat.
CHAPTER X
Houses sprang up like mushrooms on the Cropstone Wood Estate, and rents were soon at a premium. Mr. Littleham’s activities were transferred, by arrangement with Jacob, to a builder of more conservative type, and the Estate speedily became one of the show places of the neighbourhood. It combined the conveniences of a suburb with the advantages of a garden city. The special motor-omnibuses, run by the Company, connected the place with the railway. The telephone company were induced to open an exchange, and the Cropstone tradespeople, speedily abandoning their attitude of benevolent indifference, tumbled over themselves in their anxiety to obtain the orders of the neighbourhood. Jacob somewhat surreptitiously furnished a room for himself over the offices of the company and, soon after the coming of Mrs. Bultiwell and her daughter, paid a visit to the place. In fear and trembling he stole out, after an early dinner on the night of his arrival, and, seated on a hummock at the top of the ridge, looked down at the little colony.
It was not long before the expected happened. A girl in a white gown appeared in the garden immediately below him, singing softly to herself and wielding a watering can. Presently she saw Jacob and paused in her task. Jacob raised his hat and she came slowly towards him. His heart thumped against his ribs. He thought of “Maud” and other sentimental poems, where the heroine was scornful and of high degree, and the lover very much her slave. Sybil Bultiwell’s expression was certainly not encouraging.
“You don’t mean to tell me, Mr. Pratt,” she began coldly, “that you are coming to live out here yourself?”
“No idea of it,” Jacob hastened to explain, as he sprang to his feet. “I have just furnished a room over the office, so as to spend a night or two here, now and then, and see that everything is going on all right. A new enterprise like this needs a watchful eye. No intention of making a nuisance of myself, I can promise you, Miss Bultiwell.”
In her relief she forgot that the watering can was half full. Jacob stepped quickly backwards, glancing a little disconsolately at his bespattered trousers.
“I am exceedingly sorry, Mr. Pratt,” she apologised, biting her lip.
“No consequence at all,” he assured her. “My fault entirely. By the bye, I hope you are quite comfortable. No complaints?”
“None whatever,” she conceded a little grudgingly.
“Water supply all right?”
“Quite.”
“And the lighting?”
“Excellent. In fact,” the girl went on bitterly, “the place is a perfect Paradise for paupers and people who have to earn their own living.”
“There is no need for you to do that,” he ventured.
She looked at him in most disconcerting fashion. All the pleasant lights which lurked sometimes in her blue eyes seemed transformed into a hard stare. Her eyebrows were drawn together in an ominous frown. Her chin was uplifted.
“What do you mean?” she demanded.
Jacob hesitated, floundered and was lost. Not a word of all the eloquence which was stored up in his heart could pass his lips. He who had already made a start, and later on was to hold his own in the world of unexpected happenings, shrank like a coward from the mute antagonism in the girl’s eyes.
“You know,” he faltered.
“The only alternative I am aware of to earning my own living,” she said quietly, “is charity. Were you proposing to offer me a share of your wonderful fortune?”
“Only if I myself were attached to it,” he answered, with a spark of courage.
She turned and looked at him.
“I am afraid,” she said, “that you are inclined to take advantage of your position, Mr. Pratt.”
“I want to say nothing to worry or annoy you,” he assured her. “It is only an accident that I am interested in this estate. I am not your benefactor. You pay your rent and you are quite independent.”
“If I felt that it were otherwise,” she replied, “we should not be here.”
“I am sure of it,” he declared. “I am only taking the privilege of every man who is honest, in telling the truth to the girl whom he prefers to any one else in the world.”
“You are an ardent lover, Mr. Pratt,” she scoffed.
“If I don’t say any more,” he retorted, “it is because you paralyse me. You won’t let me speak.”
“And I don’t intend to,” she answered coldly. “If you wish to retain any measure of my friendship at all, you will keep your personal feelings with regard to me to yourself.”
Jacob for a moment cursed life, cursed himself, his nervousness, and the whole situation. A little breeze came stealing down the hillside, bringing with it an odour of new-mown hay, of honeysuckle and wild roses from the flower-wreathed hedges. The girl lifted her head and her expression softened.
“It is a wonderful country, this,” she admitted. “You are to be congratulated upon having discovered it, Mr. Pratt. We ought to consider ourselves very fortunate, my mother and I, in having such a pleasant home.”
“It isn’t half good enough for you,” he declared bluntly.
She treated him to one of her sudden vagaries. All the discontent seemed to fade in a moment from her face. Her eyes laughed into his, her mouth softened into a most attractive curve.
“Some day,” she said, as she turned away, “I may find my palace, but I don’t think that you will be the landlord, Mr. Pratt.—Bother!”
Her ill-temper suddenly returned. A tall, elderly lady had issued from the house and was leaning over the gate. She was of a severe type of countenance, and Jacob remembered with a shiver her demeanour on his visit to the Manor House in the days of the Bultiwell prosperity. She welcomed him now, however, with a most gracious smile, and beckoned him to advance.
“I am very glad to see you, Mr. Pratt,” she said, as they shook hands. “I have not had an opportunity of congratulating you upon your access to fortune.”
“Very good of you, I’m sure,” Jacob murmured.
“We,” Mrs. Bultiwell continued, “are progressing, as you perceive, in the opposite direction. I suppose it is an idea of mine, but I feel all the time as though I were living in a sort of glorified almshouse.”
“It must seem very small to you after the Manor,” Jacob replied politely, “but the feeling you have spoken of is entirely misplaced. The Estate is conducted as a business enterprise, and will, without doubt, show a profit.”
“You are, I believe,” Mrs. Bultiwell said, “connected with the Estate?”
Jacob admitted the fact. Sybil, who had recommenced her watering, drew a little closer.
“There are a few things,” Mrs. Bultiwell observed, “to which I think the attention of the manager should be drawn. In the first place, the garden. It all requires digging up.”
“Surely that is a matter for the tenants,” Sybil intervened.
“Nothing of the sort,” Jacob pronounced. “It is a very careless omission on the part of the owners. I will give orders concerning it to-morrow.”
Mrs. Bultiwell inclined her head approvingly. Having once tasted blood, she was unwilling to let her victim go.
“If you will step inside for a moment, Mr. Pratt,” she went on, “there are one or two little things I should like to point out to you. The cupboard in Sybil’s room—”
“Mother,” Sybil protested, “Mr. Pratt has nothing to do with these matters.”
“On the contrary,” Jacob replied mildly, “I am just the person who has to do with them. You are paying a very good rent, Mrs. Bultiwell, and any little thing the Estate can do to make you more comfortable—”
“Come this way, Mr. Pratt,” Mrs. Bultiwell interrupted firmly....
Sybil was still watering the garden when he came out. She waited until he had exchanged cordial farewells with Mrs. Bultiwell, and then summoned him to her. Mrs. Bultiwell was still standing on the threshold, smiling at them, so she was compelled to moderate her anger.
“What have you been doing in there with mother?” she demanded.
“There were one or two little things my clerk of the works has neglected,” he answered. “I promised to see to them, that’s all.”
“You know perfectly well that we arranged for the house as it was.”
“I don’t look upon it in that way,” he said. “There are certain omissions—”
“Oh, be quiet!” she interrupted angrily. “And the garden, I suppose, should all have been prepared for us?”
“Certainly it should have been all dug up,” he declared, “and not only that little bit where you have your roses.”
“Of course,” she answered sarcastically, “and asparagus beds made, I suppose, and standard roses planted!”
“I think, Miss Bultiwell,” he ventured, “that you might allow me the privilege of having the place made as attractive as possible for you.”
She glanced back towards the house. Mrs. Bultiwell, well pleased with herself, was still lingering. Sybil conducted their visitor firmly towards the gate.
“Mr. Pratt,” she said, “I will try and not visit these things upon you; but answer me this question. Have you given my mother any indication whatever of your—your ridiculous feelings towards me?”
“Your mother gave me no opportunity,” he replied. “She was too busy talking about the house.”
“Thank goodness for that, anyhow! Please understand, Mr. Pratt, that so far as I am concerned you are not a welcome visitor here at any time, but if ever you should see my mother, and you should give her the least idea of what you are always trying to tell me, you will make life a perfect purgatory for me. I dislike you now more than any one I know. I should simply hate you then. You understand?”
“I understand,” he answered. “You want me, in short, to join in a sort of alliance against myself?”
“Put it any way you like,” she said coldly.
“I am a perfectly harmless person,” he declared, “who has never wronged you in thought or deed. It is my misfortune that I have a certain feeling for you which I honestly don’t think you deserve.”
She dropped the watering can and her eyes blazed at him.
“Not deserve?” she repeated.
“No!” he replied, trembling but standing his ground firmly. “Every nice girl has a feeling of some sort for the man who is idiot enough to be in love with her. I am just telling you this to let you know that I can see your faults just as much as the things in you which—which I worship. And good night!”...
Jacob sat out on the hillside until late, smoking stolidly and dreaming. Inside the little white-plastered house below, from which the lights were beginning to steal out, Sybil was busy preparing supper and waiting upon her highly-pleased and triumphant parent. Later, she too sat in the garden and watched the moon come up from behind the dark belt of woodland which sheltered the reservoir. Perhaps she dreamed of her prince to come, as the lonely man on the hillside was dreaming of the things which she typified to him.
CHAPTER XI
Jacob sought distraction in the golfing resorts of England and the Continent, tried mountaineering in Switzerland, at which he had some success, and finally, with the entire Dauncey ménage, took a small moor near the sea in Scotland, and in the extreme well-being of physical content found a species of happiness which sufficed well enough for the time. It was early winter before he settled down in London again, with the firm determination of neither writing to nor making any enquiries concerning Sybil. Chance, however, brought him in touch with her before many days were passed.
“Who is the smartly dressed, sunburnt little Johnny who is staring at you so, Miss Bultiwell?” asked her vis-à-vis at a luncheon party at the Savoy one day. “His face seems familiar to me, but I can’t place him. I’m sure I’ve been told something interesting about him, somewhere or other.”
“That,” Sybil replied coldly, glancing across the room towards a small table against the wall, at which Jacob and Dauncey were seated, “is Mr. Jacob Pratt.”
Mason, one of the mysteries of smarter Bohemian life, a young man of irreproachable appearance, a frequenter of the best restaurants, with a large acquaintance amongst the racing and theatrical world but with no known means of subsistence, showed marked interest in the announcement.
“Not Jacob Pratt, the oil millionaire?” he exclaimed.
She nodded.
“His money comes to him, I believe, from some oil springs in the western States of America,” she acquiesced. “His brother is a successful prospector.”
The young man leaned across the table.
“Did you hear that, Joe?” he enquired.
Joe Hartwell, a smooth-shaven, stalwart young American, with fleshy cheeks and unusually small eyes, assented vigorously.
“Mighty interesting,” was his thoughtful comment. “A millionaire, Lady Powers.”
Grace Powers, an attractive looking young lady, who had made meteoric appearances upon the musical comedy stage and in the divorce court, and was now lamenting the decease of her last husband—a youthful baronet whom she had married while yet a minor—gazed across at Jacob with frank interest.
“What a dear person!” she exclaimed. “He looks as though he had come out of a bandbox. I think he is perfectly sweet. What a lucky girl you are to know him, Sybil!”
“You all seem to have taken such a fancy to him that you had better divide him up amongst you,” Sybil suggested coldly. “I detest him.”
“Please introduce me,” Grace Powers begged,—“that is, if you are sure you don’t want him yourself.”
“And me,” Mason echoed.
“Can’t I be in this?” the third man, young Lord Felixstowe, suggested, leaning forward and dropping the eyeglass through which he had been staring at Jacob. “Seems to me I am as likely to land the fish as any of you.”
Sybil thoroughly disliked the conversation and did not hesitate to disclose her feelings.
“Mr. Pratt is only an acquaintance of mine,” she declared, “and I do not wish to speak to him. If he has the temerity to accost me, I will introduce you all—not unless. It will serve him right then.”
Mason looked at her reprovingly.
“My dear Miss Bultiwell,” he said, “in the tortuous course of life, our daily life, an unpleasant action must sometimes be faced. If you remember, barely an hour ago, over our cocktails, we declared for a life of adventure. We paid tribute to the principle that the unworthy wealthy must support the worthy pauper. We are all worthy paupers.”
Grace Powers laughed softly.
“I don’t know about the worthiness,” she murmured, “but you should see my dressmaker’s bill!”
“Useless, dear lady,” Mason sighed. “We five are, alas! all in the same box. We must look outside for relief. Since I have studied your friend’s physiognomy, Miss Bultiwell, I am convinced that an acquaintance with him is necessary to our future welfare. I can see philanthropy written all over his engaging countenance.”
“Mr. Pratt isn’t a fool,” Sybil observed drily.
“Neither are we fools,” Mason rejoined. “Besides,” he went on, “you must remember that in any little exchange of wits which might take place between Mr. Pratt and ourselves, the conditions are scarcely equal. We have nothing to lose and he has everything. He has money—a very great deal of money—and we are paupers.”
“There are other things to be lost besides money,” Sybil reminded him.
“I guess not,” Hartwell intervened, with real fervour,—“nothing else that counts, anyway.”
They watched Jacob longingly as he left the restaurant,—personable, self-possessed, and with the crudities of his too immaculate toilet subdued by experience. His almost wistful glance towards Sybil met with an unexpected reward. She bowed, if not with cordiality, at any rate without any desire to evade him. For a single moment he hesitated, as though about to stop, and the faces of her friends seemed to sharpen, as though the prey were already thrown to them. Perhaps it was instinct which induced him to reconsider his idea. At any rate he passed out, and Dauncey pressed his arm as they emerged into the street.
“I have never been favourably impressed with Miss Bultiwell,” the latter observed, “but I like the look of her friends still less.”
“Sharks,” Jacob murmured gloomily, “sharks, every one of them, and it wouldn’t be the faintest use in the world my telling her so.”
The opportunity, at any rate, came a few days later, when Jacob found amongst his letters one which he read and reread with varying sensations. It was in Sybil’s handwriting and dated from Number 100, Russell Square.
Dear Mr. Pratt,
If you are smitten with the new craze and are thinking of having dancing lessons, will you patronise my little endeavour? Lady Powers, who was with me at the Milan the other day, and I, have a class at this address every Thursday, and give private lessons any day by appointment. Perhaps you would like to telephone—1324, Museum. I shall be there any morning after eleven o’clock.
Sincerely yours,
Sybil Bultiwell.
P.S. I dare say you have heard that my mother has gone to make a long stay with a sister at Torquay, and I have let our Cropstone Wood house at quite a nice profit. I am staying for a few weeks with Lady Powers, who was at school with me.
Jacob summoned Dauncey and put the letter into his hand.
“Read this, my astute friend, and comment,” he invited.
Dauncey read and reread it before passing it back.
“The young lady,” he observed, “is becoming amenable. She is also, I should imagine, hankering after the fleshpots. A month or two of typing has perhaps had its effect.”
“Any other criticism?”
Dauncey shook his head.
“It seems to me an ordinary communication enough,” he confessed.
“I suppose you are right,” Jacob admitted thoughtfully. “Perhaps I am getting suspicious. It must have been seeing Miss Bultiwell with that hateful crowd.”
“You think that the dancing class is a blind?”
Jacob glanced back at the letter and frowned.
“I don’t think Miss Bultiwell would stoop to anything in the nature of a conspiracy, but those two men, Hartwell and Mason, are out and out wrong ’uns, and it is several months since any one tried to rob me.”
“You’ll go, all the same,” Dauncey observed, with a smile.
Jacob leaned over to the telephone.
“Museum 1324,” he demanded.
At half-past four that afternoon, Jacob rang the bell at a large and apparently empty house in Russell Square. The door was opened after a brief delay by a woman who appeared to be a caretaker and who invited him to ascend to the next floor. Jacob did so, and, pushing open a door which was standing ajar, found himself in a large apartment with a polished oak floor, two or three lounges by the wall, a gramophone, and a young lady whom he recognised as Sybil’s companion at the Milan.
“Mr. Pratt,” she greeted him sweetly. “I am so glad to know you.”
Jacob shook hands and murmured something appropriate.
“Sybil will be here in a few minutes,” the young lady continued. “You are going to have a lesson, aren’t you?”
“I believe so,” Jacob answered. “I hope you won’t find me very stupid.”
She smiled up into his face.
“You don’t look as though you would be. I am Sybil’s partner, Grace Powers. I saw you at the Milan the other day, didn’t I? Are you in a great hurry to start, or would you like to sit and talk for a few minutes?”
Jacob accepted the chair to which she pointed, and a cigarette.
“You find it tiring giving these lessons?” he enquired politely.
“Sometimes,” she admitted. “I have just had such a stupid boy. He will never learn anything, and he is such a nuisance.”
“I hope you won’t have to find fault with me,” Jacob observed.
She smiled.
“Not in the same way, at any rate.”
“A timid dancer?” Jacob queried.
She shrugged her shoulders.
“We won’t discuss him,” she said. “He bores me. He is one of those persistent young men who make love to you in monosyllables and expect success as a matter of course.”
“In how many syllables,” Jacob began——
She interrupted him with a little grimace.
“You know perfectly well you will never want to make love to me,” she said. “You are in love with Sybil Bultiwell, aren’t you?”
“Did she tell you so?”
The girl shook her head.
“I just guessed it from the way you looked at her. And I expect you are one of those picturesque survivals, too, who can only love one woman at a time. Aren’t you, Mr. Pratt?”
“I don’t know what I am capable of yet,” Jacob confessed. “You see, my career as a philanderer has only just begun. I had to work hard until about a year ago.”
“I have heard all about your wonderful fortune,” she said, looking at him with veneration. “It gives you a sort of halo, you know. We all speak of you as a kind of Monte Cristo. It’s a queer thing, isn’t it, the fascination of wealth?”
“I haven’t noticed that it’s done me much good up till now, so far as regards the things we were discussing,” Jacob replied, a little sadly.
“Then that must be because you are very unresponsive,” she said softly, rising to her feet and coming and standing before him. “Would you care—to dance?”
“Hadn’t I better set the gramophone going first?” Jacob suggested, with blatant lack of intuition.
She drew back a little, laughed softly, and put on a record herself. Then she held out her arms.
“Come, then, my anxious pupil,” she invited. “What do you most wish to learn, and have you any idea of the steps?”
Jacob confessed to some acquaintance with modern dancing and a knowledge at least of the steps. They danced a fox trot, and at its conclusion she shook her head at him.
“I know all about you now, Mr. Pratt,” she said. “You are an absolute fraud. You dance as well as I do.”
“But I need practice badly,” he assured her anxiously.
“I suppose—it’s really Sybil?” she asked ruefully, looking him in the eyes with a queer little smile at the corners of her lips.
“I’m afraid so,” he admitted. “You won’t give me away, will you?”
“How can I give you away?” she asked. “Your behavior has been perfect—of its sort.”
“I mean about the dancing,” he explained. “If Miss Bultiwell thinks I know as much about it as I do——”
“I understand,” she interrupted. “I won’t say a word. Shall we try a hesitation?”
Here Jacob found a little instruction useful, but he was a born dancer and very soon gave his instructress complete satisfaction. Just as they had finished, Sybil came in. She greeted Jacob politely, but with none of her partner’s cordiality.
“I am sorry to be late, Mr. Pratt,” she said. “I hope that Grace has been looking after you.”
“Admirably,” he replied.
“I suppose you thought I was quite mad when you got my note,” she went on, walking to the mantelpiece and drawing off her gloves.
“Not at all,” he assured her. “I was very glad to get it. Very kind of you to give me the chance of polishing up my dancing.”
“Try a fox trot with him, Sybil,” Grace suggested. “I think he is going to be quite good.”
Jacob was as clumsy as he dared be, but he was naturally very light on his feet, and, with an unusually correct ear for music, he found blunders difficult. They danced to the end without conversation.
“I do not think,” Sybil said, a little coldly, “that you will need many lessons.”
“On the contrary,” he replied, “I feel that I shall need a great many. I am rather out of breath. May I have a rest?”
“There will be another pupil very shortly,” she warned him.
“Never mind,” he answered. “You can give me a longer time to-morrow.”
She turned towards him with upraised eyebrows.
“To-morrow? Surely you are not thinking of coming every day?”
“Why not? I get so little exercise in London, and wherever one goes, nowadays, there is dancing.”
“But you don’t need the lessons.”
“I need the exercise, and indeed I am much worse than you think I am. That happened to be a very decent tune.”
“Don’t discourage a pupil,” Grace intervened. “We can fit him in every day, if he wants to come. We charge an awful lot though, Mr. Pratt.”
“You ought to,” Jacob replied. “You teach so exceptionally well. May I pay for a few lessons in advance, please,” he asked, producing his pocketbook; “say a dozen?”
“It’s a guinea a time,” Grace told him. “Don’t be rash.”
Jacob laid the money upon the desk, and Sybil wrote out a formal receipt.
“I think you are very foolish,” she said, “and if you take my advice you will come once a week.”
“And if you take mine,” Grace declared, leaning over his shoulder and laughing, “you’ll come every day. We might go bankrupt, and then you’d lose your money.”
“I shall come as often as I am allowed,” Jacob assured her.
“Oh, you can come when you like,” Sybil remarked carelessly. “If I am not here, Grace can give you a lesson. You will find it a most informal place,” she went on, listening to footsteps on the stairs. “People drop in and have a dance whenever they feel like it. I am glad you are not an absolute beginner. It is sometimes embarrassing for them.”
The door opened and Hartwell entered, followed by Mason. Sybil introduced them. Both were exceedingly cordial.
“Heard of you out in New York, Mr. Pratt,” the former remarked, as he shook hands. “I only just missed meeting your brother. He got well ahead of our prospectors, out West.”
“My brother has been very fortunate,” Jacob replied.
“I guess he is one of the brightest men who ever came over to the States from this country,” Hartwell declared. “Knows all about oil, too.”
“Not too much gossip,” Sybil interposed. “Mr. Pratt, you are here to learn dancing. So are you, Mr. Hartwell. Please try a hesitation with me, and, Grace, you take Mr. Pratt.”
“Sybil is very foolish,” Grace whispered to Jacob, as they swayed up and down the room. “Mr. Hartwell is perfectly hopeless, and you dance beautifully.”
“It is you,” Jacob told her, “who are inspiring.”
She looked into his eyes.
“I believe you are going to improve,” she said hopefully.
CHAPTER XII
Dauncey accepted his chief’s invitation, one morning about a week later, when things were slack, to sit in his room and have a chat.
“How goes the dancing?” he enquired, stretching out his hand for a cigarette.
“Interesting developments may shortly be expected,” Jacob replied reflectively. “Up to the present, only two of the party have declared themselves. Mr. Mason has made propositions to me with regard to finding the money for starting a night club, and Mr. Hartwell has offered me a share in some oil springs in Trinidad.”
“A certain lack of imagination about Hartwell’s offer,” Dauncey commented.
“On the contrary, I thought it rather subtle,” Jacob observed. “You see, I am supposed to know all about oil, although I really know no more about it than the man in the moon. And there certainly is oil in Trinidad.”
“What about the others?”
“Lady Powers,” Jacob confessed, “has shown a flattering desire for my escort to dinner; in fact, I am afraid I am committed to next Sunday night. It appears that she is in some slight financial trouble and requires the advice of a man of the world.”
“Hm!” Dauncey ejaculated. “What does Miss Bultiwell say to that?”
“I don’t think she knows,” Jacob admitted, “but I am afraid she wouldn’t care if she did. Grace Powers pretends to want to be very secretive about it, but I fancy that’s only to spare my feelings.”
“Any other members of the gang?” Dauncey enquired.
“There’s that young sprig of fashion, Lord Felixstowe,” Jacob replied. “I haven’t heard from him yet. He is rather a nice boy. And there is Miss Bultiwell herself.”
“Have you had any conversation with her?”
“She is lunching with me to-day. I expect I shall get into trouble about it, but I am going to speak to her plainly about her friends.”
“How did she get mixed up with such a crew?”
“She was at school with Grace Powers,” Jacob answered, “but I don’t know how they came together again. She will either tell me this morning—or she won’t.”
“And Lord Felixstowe?”
There was a knock at the door. The office boy brought in a card. Jacob glanced at it and smiled.
“His turn appears to have arrived,” he said. “You can show Lord Felixstowe in.”
Dauncey departed, and the visitor entered and proceeded to make himself at home. Notwithstanding a slightly receding chin and a somewhat weedy frame, he was a personable being, and Jacob stifled a sigh of envy as he realised that he would never be able to wear a Guards’ tie with his lounge suit. The young man accepted a cigarette. His attitude was distinctly friendly.
“Thought I’d look you up, old thing,” he said. “Not much chance of a powwow at Russell Square. As soon as you and I get a word together, that chap Hartwell comes butting in, or else Phil Mason has a bundle of prospectuses to show you. What-ho the giddy night club! What-ho the Trinidad Oil Wells!”
Jacob coughed.
“There is one thing about Russell Square which puzzles me,” he confided, “and that is, except for the people you have mentioned, I seem to be the only pupil.”
Lord Felixstowe smiled knowingly.
“They’ve got a few old crooks come later in the day,” he said. “The reason you don’t meet any one else there is because they like to keep you to themselves.”
“I can’t see what they gain by that,” Jacob confessed, a little mystified.
The young lordling assumed the patient air of one having to deal with a person of inferior intelligence.
“Come, come,” he remonstrated, “you must know that they’re trying to milk you for a bit. Hasn’t Mason suggested your financing his night club?”
“Some sort of a proposition was made,” Jacob acknowledged. “I declined.”
“And Hartwell? Has he mentioned some oil wells in Trinidad?”
“He has,” Jacob admitted. “I happen to be doing rather well in oils in another direction.”
“You haven’t turned up early one day and found Grace in tears with a dressmaker’s bill on her knee, have you?”
“That, I presume, is to arrive. Lady Powers is dining with me next Sunday.”
“Mind your P’s and Q’s, then,” the young philosopher advised. “She’s a fly little hussy. You see, Pratt, I know the world a bit. Seems to me I might be rather useful to you—in fact that’s why I came here this morning.”
“It is very kind of you,” Jacob said. “In what way, may I ask?”
“You see,” Lord Felixstowe proceeded, hitching up his trousers and drawing his chair a little nearer, “I know the ropes, Pratt, and you don’t. You’re a very decent fellow who’s made a pot of money, and naturally, just at first, you don’t know where you are. You want to get on, eh, to know the right sort of people, go to the right sort of places, be seen about with the right sort? Between ourselves, old thing, Hartwell and Mason aren’t the right sort. Suits me to pick their brains a bit, now and then, when the oof’s coming along slowly, but then I can do what I like—you can’t.”
“Let me have your concrete proposition, Lord Felixstowe,” Jacob suggested, with a faint smile at the corner of his lips.
“Righto! Tell you what I’m prepared to do. I’ll pal you up, take you to lunch and dinner at the smart places, take you to the Opera right nights, and the mater shall ask you to dine once in Belgrave Square and send you cards for her big shows. Then the governor shall ask you to lunch at his club one day, and if there’s anything doing, you tumble, there are a couple of his clubs I think he could put you up for. You’ll be seen about with me. People will ask who you are. I shall lay it on thick, of course, about the millions, and before you know where you are, old bean, you’ll be hobnobbing with all the dukes and duchesses of the land.”
“I see,” Jacob murmured. “And what are your terms?”
“A thousand down, and two hundred and fifty a month,” the young man replied. “You pay all the expenses, of course.”
“Does that include the luncheon with your father and the dinner with your mother?” Jacob asked.
“It includes everything. Of course, if the governor has a word or two to say on his own, that’s neither here nor there. I want to see you a bit more ambitious, Pratt,” the young man declared, throwing one leg over the other and lighting a fresh cigarette. “It’s the millions that count, nowadays. Why, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t marry one of our set, if you play your cards properly and drop that other rabble. And look here, old dear, I’ll give you a straight tip. You chuck 100, Russell Square. They’re too fly, those chaps. I’m looking around for anything there may be to pick up myself, but they’re too hot for me.”
Jacob glanced at his watch.
“Well,” he said, “I’m very much obliged to you, Lord Felixstowe, for your visit, and I have thoroughly enjoyed our conversation. I shall certainly remember your warning, and as for your offer—well, I’ll think about it.”
The visitor rose reluctantly to his feet.
“It’s an offer I wouldn’t make to every one, Pratt,” he concluded. “Just happens I’m rather at a loose end—had a nasty week at Newmarket. I might even get you a few days down at our place in Norfolk, if you know how to handle a gun.”
“I’ll consider it,” Jacob promised once more. “You’ll have to excuse me just now. I’m lunching with a young lady—Miss Bultiwell, in fact.”
Lord Felixstowe picked up his hat.
“See you later, then,” he concluded. “Old friend of yours, Miss Bultiwell, eh?”
“An acquaintance of some years’ standing,” Jacob admitted.
“Give her the straight tip,” Lord Felixstowe advised earnestly. “Don’t know what she’s doing with that crew, anyhow. She seems a different sort of person altogether. Tell her to cut it out. By-by!”
Jacob found his luncheon companion cold but amiable. He waited until they were halfway through the meal, and then took his courage in both hands.
“Miss Bultiwell,” he began, “I don’t like your friends.”
“Really?” she said. “I thought you were a great success with them.”
“My popularity,” he assured her drily, “is waning. I have annoyed Mr. Mason by refusing to find the money for him to start a night club, Mr. Hartwell by not buying some oil wells in Trinidad, and, in a lesser degree, Lord Felixstowe by not jumping at the chance of engaging him as my social mentor at a somewhat exorbitant salary.”
“And Grace?”
“Lady Powers is dining with me on Sunday night,” Jacob announced. “Her schemes seem to need a little further formulation.”
Sybil bit her lip.
“You are very rude about my friends.”
“I am not rude at all, and they are not your friends.”
“Surely I know best about that?” she demanded haughtily.
“You do,” he admitted, “and you know perfectly well that in your heart you agree with me and they are not your friends. Every one of them is more or less an adventurer, and how you found your way into such company I can’t imagine.”
“When did Grace ask you to take her out to dinner?” she enquired irrelevantly.
“Lady Powers has been kind enough to suggest it several times,” he replied. “She thinks that it would give me confidence to dance in public.”
“You have quite enough confidence,” Sybil declared, with some asperity, “and as a matter of fact you dance too well to need any more lessons.”
“Are you giving up teaching?” he asked.
“That depends.”
“You really mean to continue your association with these people? Mind, I am speaking advisedly concerning them. Mason and Hartwell are both well-known about town. They are adventurers pure and simple and absolutely improper associates for you.”
“I can take care of myself,” Sybil assured him indifferently.
“But you ought not to be seen with such a crowd,” he objected.
“Why not? I haven’t the slightest objection to being called an adventuress. I want to make money, and so far as money is concerned, I have no conscience. I am a hopelessly incompetent clerk or secretary, and I am keeping the chorus for a last resource.”
“Why should you be an incompetent secretary?” he demanded.
She shrugged her shoulders.
“I suppose I haven’t the temperament for service. I was dismissed from my first two situations for what they called impertinence, and I had to leave the third because all three partners tried to kiss me. I didn’t mind one,” she went on reflectively, “but with all three it grew monotonous.”
“Brutes!” Jacob exclaimed fiercely.
“Oh, no, they were quite nice about it,” she declared. “It isn’t that I mind being kissed particularly, but I hate it to come into the two pounds a week arrangement. Besides, there is another fatal objection to my being able to keep any post as a typist.”
“What is it?” he asked.
“I simply cannot wear the clothes,” she confessed.
He looked puzzled.
“I don’t quite understand. You don’t have to wear a uniform or anything.”
She looked at him pityingly.
“Look at me,” she directed. “Now what would you say if I walked into your office and asked for a post as typist at two or three pounds a week?”
“Take you on like a shot,” he assured her enthusiastically.
“Don’t be silly. I don’t mean personally. I am looking upon you as a type. Well, supposing you did take me on, your wife would call down at the office in a few days, look at me and call you to one side. I can hear her whispering in your ear—‘You must get rid of that girl.’”
“And just why?” he asked.
“I suppose you think that I am very plainly dressed?”
“You look very nice,” he declared, glancing at her neat black and white check tailormade suit, the smart hat, and remembering his glimpse of her silk stockings and shapely black patent shoes as she had come down the stairs; “very nice indeed, but you are dressed quite plainly.”
“The ignorance of men!” she sighed. “This costume I have on cost forty guineas and came from one of the best places in London. My hat cost twelve, and everything else I have on is in proportion. These are the last remnants of my glory. Well, when I went down to the city, I had to wear a blue serge costume I had bought ready-made, sort of hybrid stockings which I hated, a hat of the neat variety, which means no shape and no style, fabric gloves, and shoes from a ready-made shop. I felt, day by day, just as though I were trying to play a hopeless part in some private theatricals. I couldn’t breathe. You see, I am not in the least a heroine. I want the things I’ve been used to, somehow or other.”
“There is another alternative,” Jacob ventured.
“You refer, I suppose, to marriage or its equivalent? As it happens, however, I have peculiar views about sacrificing my liberty. I would sooner give everything I have to a person I cared for than sell myself to a person whom I disliked. Isn’t that your bill?”
Jacob’s fingers trembled a little as he drew out a note and laid it upon the plate.
“I wonder why you dislike me so much,” he speculated, as they waited for his change.
She contemplated him indifferently.
“Does one discuss those things? Are you coming to Russell Square for your lesson this afternoon?”
“It scarcely seems worth while,” he sighed.
“I think you had better,” she said, frowning. “They are expecting you.”
“They?” he repeated.
A little spot of colour burned in her cheeks. She looked away hastily.
“The lady with whom you are going to dine on Sunday night, for one,” she reminded him.
There was a moment’s silence. Jacob was perplexed.
“Are you going to be there?” he enquired.
“Yes!”
He glanced at his watch.
“We may as well go together, then,” he suggested.
They walked up the stairs to the street, and he handed her into his car, which was waiting. On their way to Russell Square she was unusually silent. At the top of Shaftesbury Avenue she turned to him abruptly.
“Perhaps you had better not come, after all,” she said. “I will make your excuses to Grace.”
“I can take care of myself,” Jacob replied.
Her eyes mocked him.
“You are quite sure?”
“Perfectly.”
She shrugged her shoulders and made no other remark until they drew up in front of the house in Russell Square. When he would have assisted her to alight, she hesitated once more.
“Listen,” she said, speaking with a curious jerkiness. “You were quite right about Hartwell and Mason. They are adventurers—and they are both waiting for you inside. They want your money very badly. We all want it. Now don’t you think you had better postpone your lesson?”
Jacob smiled confidently.
“What I have is yours for the asking,” he declared. “It will be theirs only if they can take it.”
She suffered him to follow her into the house.
CHAPTER XIII
It must have been, Jacob decided, about half an hour later when his senses readjusted themselves to his existing environment. He was in what had apparently been the kitchen, situated in the basement of the house, seated in a fairly comfortable chair to which he was tied by cords. Hartwell and Mason were watching him with the air of uneasy conspirators. Sybil, perfectly composed, was lounging in a wicker chair a little way off, smoking a cigarette. The black man who he had been told was the leader of the newest Jazz band, come to give the young lady some hints as to music, had disappeared. From the distant sound of the gramophone, he gathered that Grace Powers was engaged upstairs with a pupil.
“Feeling all right again, eh?” Mason asked anxiously.
“Perfectly, thank you,” Jacob answered. “By the bye, what happened?”
“You—er—had a sort of faint,” Mason began—
“Don’t start that junk,” Hartwell intervened. “You were doped by the nigger and carried down here. We want some money from you, Pratt.”
“Does this seem a reasonable way to get it?” Jacob enquired, looking down at the marks on his wrists.
“I guess it’ll do the trick,” was the gruff rejoinder.
“Well, get on with the programme, then,” Jacob directed.
“We’re going to let you off cheap,” Mason said. “There’s your cheque book on the table there, and a fountain pen by the side. If you are willing to sign an open cheque for five thousand pounds, payable to Miss Sybil Bultiwell, you can dine at home to-night.”
“Why to Miss Bultiwell?”
“Because we think it well to have Miss Bultiwell formally associated with the transaction,” Mason explained, with a crafty smile. “Miss Bultiwell will endorse the cheque and receive her share of the—er—proceeds.”
Jacob turned a little in his chair, so as to face Sybil. She met his gaze defiantly.
“It was scarcely necessary to resort to such means as these, Miss Bultiwell, if you were in need of five thousand pounds, or any part of it,” he said quietly.
“Perhaps not,” she retorted, “but can’t you see the difference? I wouldn’t take a penny of your money from you as a gift, but I haven’t the least compunction in taking my share of what you will have to pay for your freedom.”
“I see,” Jacob murmured. “This requires consideration.”
Mason glanced at his watch.
“It is now,” he said, “a quarter past three. The banks close at four. If you want to avoid spending the night here, you’ll sign that cheque right away.”
“What happens then?” Jacob enquired.
“Miss Bultiwell will cash it at the bank, will bring the proceeds here, and in a couple of hours’ time you will be able to leave.”
“And what do you suppose my next proceeding will be?” Jacob asked.
“In an ordinary way you would go straight to Scotland Yard, I suppose,” Mason replied. “As a matter of fact, however, we are rather gambling upon the idea that, with Miss Bultiwell’s name on the cheque, and taking into consideration the fact that she is going to cash it in person, you may prefer to treat the matter as a little duel in wits in which you have been worsted, and accept the consequences like a sportsman.”
“I see,” Jacob murmured. “But supposing, even at the risk of involving Miss Bultiwell, I go to Scotland Yard?”
“Then the only person whom Scotland Yard could possibly lay their hands on would be the young lady herself,” Mason pointed out. “Hartwell and I years ago learnt the secret of disappearing from London, and I can promise you that no Scotland Yard man will lay a hand on us.”
“Excellently thought out,” Jacob confessed.
“Say, let’s cut out this chin music,” Hartwell interposed. “Just what are you going to do about it?”
“I am going to sign the cheque,” was the unhesitating reply.
They cut the bonds which secured his right hand. Jacob wrote the cheque according to their directions, signed it carefully and handed it over. They passed it to Sybil.
“In as small notes as you can get,” Mason enjoined. “Come straight back here.”
She nodded and left the room, with an insolent little glance at Jacob. The latter leaned back in his chair.
“You see, I am quite amenable,” he said. “And now, don’t you think that as I am a very small man, and feeling exceedingly unwell from the stuff on the handkerchief which that nigger of yours thrust down my throat, and there are two of you, both big fellows, you could loosen my cords for me? This is damned uncomfortable, and I hate the melodramatic appearance of it.”
“Will you promise, upon your honour, to make no effort whatever to get away before Miss Bultiwell’s return?” Mason demanded.
“I give you my word that I will do nothing of the sort.”
They cut his cords. Jacob staggered to his feet and stretched himself. A bottle and glasses upon a table at the farther end of the room attracted his attention.
“Is that whisky?” he asked, in an interested manner.
“Guess we’ll find you a Scotch and soda,” Hartwell declared. “Don’t you feel too badly about this, Pratt,” he went on, as he handed him the tumbler. “We’d have gone for a much bigger thing with you, but for Miss Bultiwell. She wouldn’t have you bled for more, and she wouldn’t have us take you where I wanted to, down Limehouse way, where we could have kept you snugly for a week, if necessary.”
“Extraordinarily considerate of her,” Jacob observed drily, as he drained the contents of the tumbler.
“I can tell you, sir,” Hartwell went on, as he handed over his cigarette case, “out in the State where I come from, we should think nothing of a hold-up like this. Why, you haven’t a scratch, and you could afford to put that five thou in the plate at church and not notice it. Have one more small one for luck.”
“I don’t mind if I do,” Jacob acquiesced.... “You fellows must see some life.”
“Not on this side,” Hartwell replied despondently. “We’re too near the edge of your little island all the time, for a job of this sort. I’m in a bit of trouble over in the States, or I shouldn’t be wasting my time here.”
Jacob stretched himself expansively in the easy-chair. He thrust his hands into his pockets and sighed.
“Just about reached the bank, hasn’t she?”
“They’re counting out the flimsies right now,” Hartwell exulted.
Jacob nodded.
“You fellows have brought this off all right,” he reflected. “I suppose you knew I shouldn’t give any trouble.”
“We kind of reckoned you’d be sensible,” Hartwell admitted.
“Supposing I’d dodged that drug and shown fight?” Jacob went on. “Were you armed, you fellows?”
Hartwell smiled contemptuously.
“Not for a little job like this,” he replied. “When I use shooting-irons, things happen. Do you get me, Pratt?”
Jacob nodded.
“You seem to have held me very lightly,” he grumbled. “I expect Mason has an automatic in his hip pocket.”
“I have never carried firearms in my life,” Mason declared, with a shiver. “I prefer finesse.”
Then Jacob began to laugh. He rose from his chair and walked up and down the room with his hands in his trousers pockets, shaking with mirth. The two men watched him at first in surprise, afterwards with growing uneasiness.
“What the hell’s got you?” Mason demanded.
“Can’t you let us into the joke?” Hartwell suggested.
“I really think I must,” Jacob replied, coming to a standstill near the door. “You know, it may seem strange to you, but honestly I am not quite chicken food. I knew a bit about you two, and I should never have come near this dancing class but that I wanted to keep an eye on Miss Bultiwell. Seemed to me yesterday that things were coming pretty well to a crisis. I was the only genuine pupil here—empty house, disappointed adventurers, and all the rest of it. So this morning I looked in at my bank and told them exactly what to do if any open cheque were presented with two little dots underneath my signature. You noticed them, didn’t you, Mason? I should think,” he concluded, glancing at his watch, “that in a matter of five minutes we ought to have some interesting visitors here.”
“The little hound’s done us!” Mason shouted. “Come on, Hartwell. Taxi’s outside. We shall just have time.”
But they faced a transformed and most unexpected Jacob Pratt. Hartwell, rushing for the door, was adroitly tripped up and fell heavily. Mason, after a moment’s whirlwind sparring, found himself on his back, seeing a thousand stars. Jacob took up his position in front of the door.
“Gentlemen,” he announced, “I promised not to attempt to escape and I shall keep my word. But as regards giving you a little lesson, that’s another matter. I might mention that I was knocked out in the semi-finals for the amateur lightweights by a chance blow. You can come along together, if you like, or separately.”
“Rush the little devil!” Hartwell shouted, rising.
They rushed—one another. To their amazed senses, Jacob seemed transformed into some extraordinary creation of india rubber, and the events of the next few minutes lived in their memories only as a hideous and painful nightmare.... In a matter of five minutes, Jacob opened the hall door to Sybil. She stared at him in bewilderment. His hand closed upon her wrist. He held her gently, but there was a feeling of iron underneath the velvet, and a new sternness in his tone.
“The notes are in your handbag, I see. Thank you!”
He thrust the roll into his pocketbook and handed her back the empty bag before she had recovered the power of speech.
“Where are they all?” she gasped. “How on earth did you get here?”
“I brought off a small bluff,” Jacob explained gravely. “Your two friends believed a little legend of mine about the signing of my cheque and expected a visit from some Scotland Yard officers. They tried to escape. You’ll find them downstairs. I am afraid Mason may have to go to the hospital, but Hartwell should be all right in a day or two, if he lies in a dark room.”
For the moment she was cowed. She looked at him almost fearfully. Hartwell and Mason were strong men. Escape seemed to her a miracle. With her wrist still in his steel-like grasp, she suffered him to lead her out on to the pavement.
“Your association with this ridiculous escapade,” he continued, “has decided me to regard it as a practical joke,—on one condition: which is that you step into my car there, allow my man to drive you to your rooms, or wherever you are staying, and promise me to have nothing whatever more to do with this gang of adventurers.”
“You are not going to give information to the police about them?” she asked breathlessly.
“I cannot without involving you,” was the cool reply. “You were the decoy. You can insure their safety.”
She shivered.
“I accept,” she murmured.
Jacob handed her into the car. She moved her skirts instinctively to make room for him by her side. He closed the door.